Products of Change Members can now catch up with the latest Paper Workstream meeting via the POC On Demand platform here.

Last month, a cross-industry collection of paper goods professionals convened for the latest discussion around the sustainable development of the paper sector. And – led by Products of Change’s Ambassador for Paper, Duncan Shearer – the session once again went to lengths to highlight the complexity of the paper conversation.

It was a special guest speaker appearance from Jonathan Tame, the managing director of the membership organisation Two Sides – a paper industry-funded group created to ‘tell the sustainable story of paper’ – that this time drove debate around both the carbon impact and biodiversity issues that surrounding the paper sector, as he offered up insight from the team’s latest research and consumer Trend Tracker data.

Two Sides, Jonathan will tell you, is on a ‘myth busting mission’ to fight paper’s corner as brands look towards digital alternatives to paper and printed products as the “more sustainable option”. Citing the company’s own research, including data gathered on consumer perception of paper-based goods and the gradual returning preference for printed paper-based products over digital (according to Two Side’s 2023 Trend Tracker), Jonathan aims to tell ‘the other side of the argument.’

“An increasing number of consumers are beginning to realise that European forests are growing,” Jonathan told attendees of the latest Paper Workstream meeting. “And we are seeing high levels of consumers returning to printed products following the drop-off during the Covid pandemic – they are not ‘preferring’ digital over paper, and companies that sound the alarm they are reducing their carbon footprint by going digital over paper are greenwashing.”

The presentation sparked lively debate from Products of Change members and Workstream attendees – a discerning group of industry professionals spanning the children’ magazine, greetings cards, and even toy industries – as questions were asked over matters of deforestation, the carbon impact of recycled paper versus virgin paper, and the biodiversity issues with promoting a monoculture through managed forests.

“It’s very easy to go one leg with this topic and only look at carbon impact,” admitted Jonathan in response to a question posed by The Guardian over whether paper sector data reflects matters of biodiversity enough. “Because it’s true, biodiversity and the questions of ‘do managed forests promote monoculture?’ do need to be asked. It’s something we have all got to take into consideration.”

Under the European Green Deal, the EU has committed to planting 3 billion additional trees by 2030 and increasing the resilience and biodiversity of existing forest ecosystems.

According to the European Environment Agency, the EU and its Member States are currently implementing various policies and initiatives that support forest restoration to achieve these goals. These include funding for reforestation and afforestation projects, support for sustainable forest management practices, and the development of green corridors.

As conversation turned to the usual suspect of the carbon footprint attached to recycled versus virgin paper and the case-by-case basis (dependent on the energy source used by individual paper mills among other factors) by which it can ‘only truly be measured’ it is becoming clear that much of the answer to questions around feedstock comes down to a diversity of the materials we do use.

Speaking on the topic via a social media post, Paul Foulkes-Arellano, a circularity educator at Circuthon Consulting, simply stated that “we can’t rely on one type of feedstock.”

“We have to be careful to use bits of everything, we can’t just go 100% into trees or 100% into castor beans. The answer is the available biomass – tonnes and tonnes of agricultural residue – wheat straw, rice straw etc. If we rely on forestry, we’re putting biodiversity at risk.”

Products of Change On Demand – Members can access the Products of Change library of On Demand content here. Non members wishing to learn more can do so by getting in touch with Rob Hutchins and Helena Mansell-Stopher.